Caroline's Miscellany

Chiappa Ltd: organs in Clerkenwell

2026-01-11T16:18:00.026+00:00

The sound of fairground organs, still heard on 'galloper' carousels, is distinctive and evocative - but less known is that much of it comes from an unassuming building in Clerkenwell. Chiappa Ltd are, the sign tells us, organ builders. That short description hardly conveys the range of instruments created by Chiappa, or the changes its business has undergone since its founding in 1864.

Giuseppi Chiappa moved from Italy to leading Parisian organmakers Gavioli before establishing his own London firm. It has been at the current Eyre Street Hill location since 1877. Chiappa Ltd initially made barrel organs (small, hand-cranked instruments which played secular music on the streets and hymns in non-conformist churches). As it grew in success, its organs grew too: its instruments included large fairground organs weighing several tons and transported on their own trailers. These magnificent instruments could include bells, drums, and moving figures as well as the organ pipes. They did not need an organist but rather produced music from books (strips of perforated cards), with the sound produced by compressed air.

In the later twentieth century, Chiappa Ltd's work increasingly focused on maintaining and repairing these organs. A fantastic news report of 1962 available in the East Anglian Film Archive, which features an interview with Victor Chiappa in his workshop, confirmed that the company was almost the last doing this work in Britain. Another report (below) features an enthusiastic collector and his fairground organ.

Today, Chiappa Ltd no longer build organs. Giuseppi's grandson Victor, who was still running the business in his 80s, died in 1993 and the company passed to his son Albert; it continues despite his death in 2008. The company is playing a vital role in the revival of interest in fairground organs, creating books of music for them. These perforated cardboard books, varnished to protect the punched holes, are produced according to the size of the organ. They contain the tunes automatically played by the organ: not only a vital element in creating the music but also important for keeping their repertoire varied. In its earliest days, the company had purchased the music from other firms but Ludiovico Chiappa produced his own arrangements from 1918. Some were even composed by one of the family, Luigi Chiappa. While some patterns were lost in a fire during the Second World War, the company continue to collect and revive them.

Chiappa Ltd is not only a part of fairground and music history. It is also a reminder that Clerkenwell was the heart of London's Italian community in the nineteenth century. Other traces of its presence, such as St Peter's Church and various cafes, are better-known but this building conjures the working lives of those Italians who settled here.

Exploring Clerkenwell:

I was on a guided walk led by Laura Agustin, who offers a range of walks exploring the lives of working-class Londoners.

Further reading:

Tracy Tolman describes a visit to Chiappa Ltd in 1984

Top five for 2025: London, Paris, Chester and Chichester!

2026-01-04T15:41:00.000+00:00

It's hard to believe that this blog is over 17 years old. That does mean it's always fun to look back over past posts, and the new year is a good time to find out which were most popular - of this year's new pieces, and of all time. Click on their titles to read more.

2025

PostBoxTree - a quirky blend of nature and street furniture in Chelsea
Railway stations! - introduction to a fantastic new site on Europe's finest stations
Wooden paving in Paris - a rare survivor and some road surface history
Hidden signs of Green Park - old signage and the Underground are two of my favourite things, and obviously my readers', too
Chester's newest statue: Thomas Brassey - another railway contribution

All-time

Walking Rotherhithe Tunnel - I did it so you don't have to
Shippam's of Chichester - the factory has gone from the town, but the quirky clock remains
Paris: quarries and catacombs (2) - skulls and symbolism below Paris's streets
St Paul's Cathedral Geometric Staircase - an eyecatching flight of history and architecture
London's ugliest example of facadism? - although there is growing competition

All the best for 2026!

Season's greetings!

2025-12-25T05:00:00.004+00:00

Merry Christmas - with a little glimpse of one of Paris's beautiful arcades, the Galerie Vivienne.

Albert Bridge in colour

2025-12-21T15:59:00.003+00:00

The Albert Bridge is perhaps London's prettiest Thames bridge, and certainly its most fragile. Right from the start, there were issues: in the 1880s, Joseph Bazalgette had to add suspension bridge elements to Roland Mason Ordish's original 1873 construction. Concrete piers were added in 1973. Despite all the changes, it is not structurally strong and traffic has to be carefully restricted.

Image by Diliff, Wikipedia

White and dainty with its fine pillars, columns and cables, it is reminiscent of a finely detailed wedding cake. However, the Albert Bridge in fact has more colour than a first glance suggests.

The green and blue accents are most obvious on the little huts at each corner of the bridge. These are tollbooths: the bridge was originally a commercial venture. It was not a successful one, though. (Unsuprisingly, as a condition for allowing it to be built was that the company had to compensate and maintain nearby Battersea Bridge.) The tolls only lasted for six years before the bridge was taken into public ownership. The booths remain, cheerful little reminders of the bridge's earliest days. And you can see signs on them warning troops to break step as they cross the bridge - a warning to the residents of nearby Chelsea Barracks. The barracks closed in 2008 but the signs remain.

The same colours are also used more subtly elsewere on the bridge's structure. They were added in 1992, to help make the bridge more visible to shipping - especially when light is poor.

The most recent works to the bridge meant it was closed for almost two years in 2010-11. It remains delicate, but Londoners' affection for it - and Grade II listing - mean that it has survived beyond many pessimistic predictions. Its delicate white lines are famous, but the less obvious coloured touches help to keep it safe as well.

Image credit: nighttime photo of Albert Bridge by Diliff - CC BY-SA 3.0

A long way from home - in Bronte country

2025-12-14T15:02:00.005+00:00

This milestone is in Haworth, Yorkshire, whose most famous residents were the Bronte sisters.

The small town has lost its industrial atmosphere since Charlotte, Anne and Emily wrote their novels, but you can still visit their parsonage home.

Best of all, you can arrive by steam train on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway - although it's a steep walk from station to town.

A long way from home

2025-12-07T15:59:00.006+00:00

... But can you guess where I was?

(I'm sure that 1/4 makes all the difference!)

Weathered and worn: Battle Abbey's stones

2025-11-30T15:05:00.030+00:00

When he won the Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror had Battle Abbey built at the site. It was completed in 1094, although of course there have been many additions and alterations in the near-millennium since. One could tell many stories about it - most obviously the tales of its extraordinary power and privilege, its near-destruction in the Reformation, and its after-lives as country house, school, and English Heritage property.

However, this post doesn't retell any of those. Instead, it shows the stories of time's passage which have carved themselves into the Abbey's very stones.

Aldwych Station and the future of travel

2025-11-23T15:05:00.005+00:00

Closed for over three decades, and only attracting 650 passengers a day even when it was open, Aldwych Station seems like an odd relic. Its disused platforms welcome tours and film crews, but they hardly point to future innovation. Or do they?

In fact, this station - like the disused platforms of Charing Cross - has been a handy place to test new ideas. And traces of some of them are visible to visitors.

New flooring and tiling schemes have been tried out here.

Different wall coverings are also visible.

My favourite of these experimental traces was only visible when the lights went out: glow-in-the-dark paint to highlight ways out in an emergency.

The luminous paint may not have made it to the wider network, but it continues to glow at the foot of these stairs, far below the feet of passers-by.

An extraordinary entrance

2025-11-16T15:42:00.004+00:00

Before reading on, take a moment to think where this fine building entrance might be found, and its likely age.

If you don't already know St Mary Redcliffe, you might not have guessed that this is the entrance to a parish church in Bristol - or that it dates to 1325. It leads into the hexagonal outer north porch, which leads in turn to an even older inner porch built at the turn of the thirteenth century.

Michael Quinton Smith's architectural history of the church suggests that the outer porch's decoration and the hexagonal porch shape were inspired by the Eleanor Crosses. Other sources of inspiration may have included nearby Wells Cathedral as well as the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral and the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral. However, the overall form of the entrance point to more distant influences - Smith identifies Indian and Chinese. This is unsurprising, as Bristol was already an important port when the church was built above its harbour; Moorish Spain was among its most frequent trading partners.

Less is said about the extraordinary carvings at the base of the arch between the two porches. English Heritage's listing text simply describes them as 'fine human-faced beasts'. That hardly does these intriguing characters justice!

Aldwych Station posters: truth or lie?

2025-11-09T13:47:00.016+00:00

The underground station at Aldwych was always a bit of an anomaly: a single-stop stub of the Piccadilly Line from Holborn. There were various plans to extend the line, but they never came to fruition. The station thus remained one terminus on an infrequent shuttle between two stations a ten-minute walk apart. Its eventual closure in 1994 was hardly a surprise.

Various parts of the station were closed (or never properly opened) so there are all sorts of survivals. They include these 1970s advertising posters.

The station had another use, though. It was closed outside weekday peak hours, making it a convenient filming location the rest of the time. And after its permanent closure, it became even more convenient - so it has stood in for livelier Tube stations on film and TV. You may have seen it on anything from Superman IV to V for Vendetta, 28 Weeks Later to Sherlock.

One consequence of this is that newer 'vintage' posters have been added at various times. In fact, regular set dressing means that the 'vintage' posters frequently vary, as a look around online demonstrates. That is why my photos of a station open until the 1990s include these posters apparently from the Second World War!

I visited with Subterranea Britannica; public tours are available with Hidden London.

Railway stations! A hundred of them!

2025-10-01T17:26:00.004+01:00

Britain is in the midst of Railway 200 celebrations, but it's not alone in its affection for rail travel and infrastructure. There's a fantastic website celebrating 100 European railway stations.

United Stations of Europe is centred on a map highlighting the continent's finest, 'selected by railway experts and enthusiasts for their geographic importance and architectural significance'. It recognises their importance as 'places of passage and of memory', important for their architecture, cultural significance, and environmental contributions.

Thirty countries feature, but London manages an impressive two entries (Waterloo and St Pancras), while other British stations include Birmingham New Street, Liverpool Lime Street, Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley. (Before Londoners get too smug, though, we are beaten by Paris which has no less than four stations on the map. I'm not disputing the choice, although I would note that the map is the creation of French railway architecture practice AREP.)

With the opportunity to browse the stations either on a map of Europe or one by one - many featuring additional information about the architects, key features, destinations, and local food and attractions - this site is well worth exploring.

PostBoxTree

2025-07-28T08:48:00.003+01:00

Here's a fun London curiosity: a postbox which has become part of a plane tree.

The postbox bears the cipher of Edward VII, so it was placed here in Drayton Gardens between 1901 and 1910. That has given it well over a century to get closer than intended to the tree behind it.

The postbox is a bit rusty but still operational. Royal Mail have obviously accepted the inevitable, since the postbox is clearly just painted up to the bark.

Shepherd's Bush mystery

2025-07-14T07:53:00.007+01:00

At the eastern end of Shepherd's Bush Green, near a pedestrian crossing, is a mysterious ventilation pipe. It's shorter than a sewer stinkpipe; and there are no obvious underground places requiring ventilation (although there's a tube station nearby and apparently there used to be toilets somewhere around here).

All I've found online is some speculation - but does anyone know what the pipe was actually ventilating?

(As an aside, I was in Shepherd's Bush for a Sherlock Holmes Society trip to the Sherlock Escape Rooms, which was great fun!)

A Bedouin tent in West London

2025-07-07T08:42:00.018+01:00

Between a terrace of houses and a traditional English church in Mortlake, West London is a surprising mausoleum. Not only is it much larger than might be expected in such a churchyard; it is shaped like a Bedouin tent. This is the last resting place of Sir Richard and Lady Isabel Burton, Victorian explorers and authors.

Richard died first, in 1890, and Isabel commissioned the strange structure. Her late husband had told her he would like them to be side by side in a tent after death, hence the design of the sandstone mausoleum. The central panel at the front was originally a stone door; opening it would activate an electric system to shake camel bells in the ceiling, adding to the tent-like atmosphere. At the rear is a window, added because Richard didn't like the dark. It currently serves as the entrance for restorers as the door has been replaced by an immobile panel. The current restoration project hopes to reinstate the door, although they do not yet know how it was constructed - a solid stone door would be impractically heavy.

The mausoleum is in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene Roman Catholic Church: Isabel was from an old Catholic family. Richard's approach to religion was rather more idiosyncratic, as acknowledged in the mixture of Islamic and Christian decoration on the mausoleum. Indeed, his first bestselling book was an account of how in 1853 he adopted various disguises in order to join the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) - something which is forbidden to non-Muslims. This glimpse of the forbidden fascinated Victorian Britain, although as Heba Al-Haj Yonis persuasively explained at a recent event, Richard's account was very much that of an outsider, missing the intense emotional and spiritual meanings of Hajj.

Richard Burton in disguise

Richard also lived and travelled in India and Somalia, as a member of the East India Company's army; to East Africa in Royal Geographic Society expeditions; and as a British consul to Fernando Po, off the West African coast, Brazil, Damascus, and finally Trieste where he died. He was a talented linguist and produced translations of the Kama Sutra and Arabian Nights along with his travel books. (The more sexually explicit translations were published privately for subscribers only, to avoid obscenity proceedings.) His interest in the Kama Sutra was part of a wider fascination with sexuality which attracted criticism from his contemporaries, and can be problematic in different ways for modern readers, not least for his racial theories. He was also rumoured to have killed another man during the Hajj in order to avoid discovery, but he always denied this.

Isabel accompanied Richard on many of his travels - although officials told her that she could not go with him to Fernando Po since the climate was apparently too dangerous for white women. She was also an accomplished author in her own right. Nonetheless, as Mara Willson discussed, she successfully positioned herself as companion and assistant to Richard - the devoted wife rather than the adventurer - in order to avoid scandalising respectable society. (In fact, she had been determined to find adventure long before she married him.) Her care for reputation extended to destroying a number of Richard's manuscripts after his death, a decision which made sense given the social attitudes of the day - and the fact that she was already being made extravagant offers by publishers who apparently intended to publish some of the work as pornographic texts - but for which she has been vilified.

The event I attended, part of the London Festival of Architecture, was hosted by Habitats and Heritage. who care for this and other monuments in the area.

Mysterious metalwork quiz: answers

2025-06-30T08:08:00.029+01:00

If you haven't tried the quiz, have a look here first! If you have, the answers are below.

The football and initials are a clue: AC for Arsenal Club. This is at the entrance to their former Highbury ground, now converted into flats.

This is the Ha'penny Hatch footbridge and (formerly lifting) rail bridge over Deptford Creek.

'Locking piece' by Henry Moore, created in 1963-4, is in Riverwalk Gardens, Millbank.

Did the clue help? This metalwork knot is on a grave in Brompton Cemetery, close to the final resting place of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Shepherd's Bush Underground Station, Central Line platforms.

Mysterious metalwork quiz: where was I?

2025-06-23T08:07:00.002+01:00

Five picture, five places. How many do you recognise?

All are in London; none of these photos have featured on the blog before.

This one really needs a clue! You'll find Emmeline Pankhurst nearby.

Answers will be posted next week (Monday 30 June).

Surprise lion!

2025-06-16T08:45:00.006+01:00

Among and around all the shiny retail at Waterloo Station are endless interesting details. Most recently, I noticed this lion head decoration on platform 15.

One reason for the richness of detail in the station is its rather piecemeal development over time. That's despite it having been rebuilt in the early twentieth century after the original station had become so confusing and complicated that the best option was to replace it altogether. The current station fully opened in 1922, having been delayed by the First World War. (For that reason, its main entrance is formed of a victory arch commemorating the war.)

However, that was not the end of the matter. Further changes have extended the station, changed visitors' perspectives on its architecture, and yes - made it a little more complicated again. Although it still can't compare to its predecessor, which had not been built as a terminus - the plan was to extend lines into the City - so had to have facilities added on in piecemeal buildings. It also housed a changing assortment of lines and services including the Necropolis Railway (to Brookwood Cemetery) which had its own private facilities, and the later arrival of tube lines. Things grew so chaotic that platform 1 was in the middle of the station and other platform numbers were used more than once, so finding your train was a real challenge!

The Battle of Waterloo Station: Puzzle - to find the train you want, or anyone able to give you any information (Punch, 30 June 1883)

By contrast, the replacment was planned and built as a terminus and the platform numbering has remained pretty sensible. But there have been subsequent alterations and additions. In 1994, Eurostar came to Waterloo. New platforms were built - and then closed again thirteen years later when the cross-channel train moved to St Pancras Station. They languished for a while, sometimes used for non-travel purposes such as dramatic performances of The Railway Children. Most recently, they reopened in 2018-19 as shiny new national railway platforms - along with the inevitable new retail spaces.

The concourse balcony opened in 2012; its main purpose may have been to create new retail and refreshment spaces but it also allows visitors to get much closer to some of the historical details.

Chester's newest statue: Thomas Brassey

2025-06-02T08:27:00.015+01:00

Happening to be in Chester on 28 May, I was able to watch the unveiling of a new statue right in front of the railway station. It was an appropriate site, because the statue commemorates Thomas Brassey (1805-1870), railway builder.

Brassey was born just outside Chester, the son of a farmer, and educated in the city. He began as a land surveyor, quickly becoming a partner of the firm in which he apprenticed and expanding it into building materials. He established a factory and major brickworks in Birkenhead. On George Stephenson's advice, he expanded his activities into railway building, starting with the Penkridge Viaduct in Staffordshire in 1835. The advice proved more than sound: other tenders followed and in 1841, Brassey won contracts in France as well. (Not entirely successfully: the Barentin Viaduct collapsed in 1846, although its replacement - which he built at his own expense - is still standing!)

The 1840s were the height of Britain's 'railway mania' and Brassey was able to pick and choose his contracts. There were a lot of them - by the time of his death, Brassey's company had built a third of the UK's railway, as well as significant amounts of rail network across the world. That meant constructing much more than track: he also built stations, viaducts, bridges and tunnels - including Chester Station itself, manufactured building materials, and employed tens of thousands of workers. And his interests extended beyond the railways: he also built part of London's sewer system. His Grand Crimean Central Railway, built at cost price, was a contribution to the war effort for the Crimean War against Russia.

Unsurprisingly, Brassey died a very wealthy man. However, he was also a modest one and had a reputation as a good employer, including to the navvies (labourers) who built the railways and whom he paid fairly as well as providing food and clothing. His work was of high quality and is still central to Britain's railway infrastructure.

The statue is not the only memorial to Brassey at the station - there is also a plaque inside, erected by the Institute of Civil Engineers.

The Thomas Brassey Society campaigned and raised funds for the statue, which was sculpted by Andy Edwards.

Street art signpainters

2025-05-26T08:10:00.003+01:00

High on an Amsterdam street are these tiny characters, working hard at painting a replacement for a missing street sign.

They are the work of Frankey, a prolific Amsterdam street artist. As he explain on his Instagram, the pair are on their second visit to Reguliersgragt. An earlier installation disappeared, so this version replaced them a couple of years ago. It's higher up than the first version, so hopefully they will be at work for some time to come!

Wooden paving in Paris

2025-05-19T08:30:00.003+01:00

The paving in this small and charming Paris passageway is unremarkable at first glance. On closer inspection, it is actually a rare survival of a nearly forgotten feature of Paris and London: wood as a road surface.

That might seem a strange choice, but it did make a certain sense. As the cities had moved to paved roads, one negative effect was hard to miss: the noise. The ceaseless sound of iron hooves and iron carriage wheels on stone was unsurprisingly unpopular with residents. Today, we have quieter surfaces such as tarmac or asphalt, but the nineteenth-century version, macadam, was made only of crushed stone. It relied on the weight of vehicles to help compact it and bind the stone dust into a crust. The result had advantages over stone paving (not least that it was cheaper), but did not prove durable under the weight of heavy traffic.

Wooden blocks offered a quieter, low-cost alternative to other methods. They were laid in Paris, as well as in various London parishes, during the nineteenth century. Thus wooden roads were found in Old Bailey in 1839 and Piccadilly in 1840, albeit briefly, before making a triumphant return to London in the 1870s. IanVisits has explored the history of London's wood-paved roads - common throughout the city in the early twentieth century and continued to be used into the 1950s. If you'd like to find some for yourself, Jane's London has an incredible A-Z of over 40 survivors (and some further resources).

Buoyed by their London success, the Improved Wood Pavement Company took their wares to Paris. The city was persuaded - and set up its own factory. Wooden paving blocks were first used in the area around the Champs Elysées and soon spread more widely.


Selection of blocks in the Paris warehouse

However, these wooden roads had their disadvantages. They became very slippery in the rain; they soaked up other liquids and became smelly and unhygienic, even causing infections in horses' hooves; they could swell and shift when wet, creating trip hazards; and in the major Paris flood of 1910, many thousands of blocks floated loose. From that point on, new road surfaces would be asphalt rather than wood.

Loose blocks in the street after flood, 1910

The patch of wood paving here is a very rare Parisian survival in the Passage Saint Maur. (Thanks to a friend for sharing that there is another patch in Paris, between the rue de Seine and the courtyard of the Institut de France/Academie Francaise, and still being kept in repair.) It is protected by a covered entrance, and is an appealing curiosity: there was another visitor at the same time as me, enjoying their encounter with this quirky piece of the past.

1910 photos: anonymous album, Bibliothèque de l'Hôtel de Ville, Paris

An abundance of animals

2025-05-12T08:30:00.002+01:00

The Natural History Museum is as remarkable for its architecture as its exhibits. The whole building is a riot of decoration, featuring plants and animals galore. How many animals can you see on this section of the facade?

As always, click the picture to enlarge it.

And then, enjoy more plants and animals at the museum.

Hidden signs of Green Park station

2025-05-06T08:37:00.009+01:00

All but the most seasoned commuters depend on Green Park station's signs to the Piccadilly, Jubilee and Victoria lines; out to the park, Piccadilly or Buckingham Palace; or for lifts, tickets or the cash machine. But a Hidden London tour reveals that there are plenty more signs languishing in places now closed to passengers.

These directions are not given in the now-familiar formats, with printed text on white enamel backgrounds. They are painted onto tile or plaster, with block-capital text and an assortment of arrows. Lines are not indicated; the message 'to the trains' apparently sufficed.

Of course it did: these date from a time when this station only served the Piccadilly line, with the Victoria (1969) and Jubilee (1979) lines decades away. The station had opened back in 1906, as the Dover Street station on the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (unsurprisingly shortened by passengers to the 'Piccadilly'). It wasn't a financial success, but there were enough passengers using Dover Street that it struggled to cope. When the line was taken into public ownership in 1933, both it and Dover Street station were officially renamed, to the Piccadilly Line and Green Park station. A modernisation project saw Green Park's ticket hall moved, with an entrance in Green Park itself, and the original lifts replaced with escalators. The pssages around those lifts were also closed, preserving the signs.

Not only are the arrows in assorted shapes; even the quantity can vary!

Some signs are now almost entirely hidden, with just a tantalising fragment peeping out from the accumulation of new walls, coverings, and grime.

There's another treat for sign-spotters on the tour. Grilles over the platforms give a new view of more familiar signage.

Of course, the tour has many more secrets to disclose! I'll leave those for you to discover for yourselves. But be warned - there are plenty of stairs...

New posts, new look!

2025-05-05T14:35:00.001+01:00

After a hiatus, new posts are coming! So it seemed like a good time for a new look and livelier layout.

Do comment with your views on the new design.

New views of Crossness Pumping Station

2024-06-29T22:04:00.004+01:00

Crossness Pumping Station is one of those amazing places that are always worth revisiting. It looks pretty snazzy outside, but inside will consistently take your breath away. And it was designed to do so – even if its purpose was pumping sewage.

Victorian London had a sewage problem. As the city and its population grew and grew, removing ‘night soil’ became more and more of a challenge. ‘Solutions’ included dumping it in the Thames - then still a major source of the city’s drinking water. The consequences were increasingly unpleasant, including several cholera epidemics and culminating in the Great Stink of 1858 when hot weather made the smell of the river/sewer unbearable. The Houses of Parliament, with their riverside location, were badly affected by the stench. After years of delaying and arguing about money, parliamentarians and local authorities were finally prompted into action.

Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette created a sewage system which drew water from across the city into large outfall sewers – one each north and south of the river – and down the Thames. The outfall sewers sloped gently downwards so that gravity kept their contents flowing, but every so often they needed a boost. South of the river, Deptford Pumping Station raised the liquid enough that it could descend once more to Crossness which – like its northern counterpart at Abbey Mills – pumped the sewage into reservoirs before their release into the ebbing tide of the Thames, which would then carry the waste safely beyond the city.

My most recent visit was organised by Subterranea Britannica, and we were hugely lucky to be able to go into areas not usually open to the public. They gave us a new perspective on the engineering and architectural wonders of this exceptional building.

Signs through time: along the A10

2024-05-05T20:34:00.003+01:00

A quick look at changing styles of street signs, all from a stroll along the main road from Dalston Junction to Stoke Newington stations. (It's the A10, although its name changes from Kingsland High Street to Stoke Newington Road and then Stoke Newington High Street.) They are a great example of how the materials, typography, and styles have evolved - but also look out for the changing local authorities and postcodes.

The oldest signs were not standard in format, and some are quite elaborate.

Garnham Street has a rather rich collection: fantastic old, non-standard signs; the faint traces of a painted replacement; and below it, the current 'official' sign. And on one side of the street, there's also the faded remains of a painting on tile.

Brighton Road has traces of a sign painted directly onto the brickwork (once quite common) above a modern sign attached to it.

This blue and white sign is quite unusual, with something of a French feel to it. It looks like a move towards the contemporary format, although it still has a way to go.

The standard format has itself changed significantly. Sometimes the changes are subtle - look in particular at the 'of' and the '6' in these two signs.

A more modern version has no borough name; the postal district 'N.16' has faded from red to pink.

There is a nice pair of modern styles on Beatty Road, showing how much they have changed even in recent decades.

Crossway shows yet another modern style and colour scheme, but there's an intriguing plaque alongside it.

A closer look at the plaque shows that it is a boundary marker - not for a parish but for the Borough of Stoke Newington. It is dated 1901; today, the borough is no more. As the street signs tell us, it has been absorbed into the Borough of Hackney.

Other signs have fared badly but still share their information as best they can. We can see that in fact, they tell us more than their words alone spell out!